Washington — With two months to go until Election Day, neither former President Donald Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris have released comprehensive recent medical records, leaving voters in the dark about the current state of their health.
Trump, 78, would be the oldest person ever to enter the White House. And Harris, 59, who became the Democratic nominee last month and ran for president in 2020, has not publicly released the results of extensive medical tests in any of her White House bids. Election Day may not be until Nov. 5, but Americans are already starting to vote this month, with the first ballots being mailed in North Carolina starting Friday.
Trump told CBS News In an Aug. 20 interview, Trump said he recently underwent an annual medical exam and that he would be “very happy” to release those results. Trump also told CBS News that he had taken two cognitive tests, which he passed “with flying colors.” The campaign has not released those results.
In November 2023, Trump posted a letter from his osteopathic physician, Bruce Aronwald, stating that Trump’s most recent comprehensive exam was in September 2023. The letter stated that Trump’s “general health is excellent” and that his “physical examinations were well within normal ranges and his cognitive examinations were exceptional.” But the letter did not provide specific information, such as Trump’s vital signs or medications he was taking.
The Trump campaign also did not make its doctors available to the press for questions after the former president was shot in the ear during a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson, who was Trump’s physician while he was in the White House, posted a memo on July 26 saying that he had reviewed Trump’s hospital records and that he was doing “extremely well” following the attempted assassination. Trump has said he suffered no long-term effects from the shooting and that his ear has since healed.
In June 2020, a summary of Trump’s physical released by the White House said he weighed 244 pounds, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers obese for his height. His blood pressure was 121 over 79. His daily medications included aspirin and rosuvastatin, a cholesterol-lowering drug. In October 2020, a few weeks before Election Day, Trump was hospitalized for several days with COVID-19. Trump’s current physician, Aronwald, said in the November 2023 letter that Trump had lost weight, but did not say how much.
The issue of the candidates’ health was a major topic in the presidential race between Trump and President Biden before the president withdrew to make way for Harris in July, with Trump frequently questioning Mr. Biden’s mental fitness. In the wake of his poor performance in the presidential debate in June, Mr Biden said he had not done any cognitive testing because “no one told me to.” The White House has results of his most recent physical in February, when the White House physician declared him “fit for duty.”
Very little is known about Harris’ medical history. She did not release the results of a physical exam while she was running for vice president in 2020. She had COVID-19 in April 2022 and took the drug Paxlovid during her recovery. She tested negative about a week after she first tested positive. In July 2021, she visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for what the White House described as a routine doctor’s appointment.
CBS News has repeatedly asked Harris’ campaign about the results of an annual physical. The campaign has not responded. CBS News also reached out to Trump’s campaign about his promise that he would “gladly” release his results. When asked when that might happen, campaign spokesman Steve Cheung pointed to the November 2023 letter.
Health records of presidential candidates
In recent decades, it has become common for presidential candidates to release information about their health and suitability for the presidency. This practice has been prompted in part by a number of presidents who had serious health problems that only later became public.
“In the modern era, and certainly since the 1980s, the expectation, the norm, is that presidential candidates and presidents will at least release some information about a recent medical study and basically testify to the public, to the American people, that they are fit to serve,” said Matthew Dallek, a professor and political historian at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management.
By this point in the 2020 election cycle, both Trump and Biden had released the results of physicals that had been performed the previous year. Biden’s most recent annual physical at that point was in December 2019, and Trump released his results in June 2020.
But, Dallek noted, there is no law requiring candidates or presidents to release health records.
“And the reason it’s so important is that we now know what the country didn’t know in the present, in the present, in the moment, that many presidents have been much sicker than we realized and the country realized,” Dallek continued. “And in some cases, more incapacitated than the American public knew.”
When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a fourth term in 1944, he was very ill and his doctors did not expect him to serve another four years, Dallek said. John F. Kennedy had a host of health problems, including debilitating back pain that required him to take as many as 12 different medications.
“Would the American people have voted for that?” Dallek said of Kennedy. “We don’t know.”
Dallek said it’s “surprising” that Harris hasn’t released a letter from her doctor, but noted she’s been in the race for less than two months.
“I would think that would actually work to the advantage of her campaign because it would remind voters that she is almost 20 years younger than Trump,” Dallek said. “Now, of course, the caveat is that she was thrust into this position about six weeks ago and, frankly, her medical may not be at the top of the campaign’s to-do list.”
Gene Healy, senior vice president for policy at the liberal-leaning Cato Institute, who studies the presidency, is skeptical about how much voters can glean from a candidate’s health record, which is not the result of an independent investigation.
“When there is a question about a president’s health, given the long history of official lies on the subject, only a fool would take anything on faith,” Healy said. “Reagan’s old line about the Soviet Union, ‘Trust but verify,’ is too mild in this context: It should be verify, don’t trust.”
Healy is convinced that the 81-year-old Biden has deteriorated physically and is astonished at how long the president’s advisers were able to “shield the public from the true extent of the accident.”
How exactly the country would examine a president’s health is unclear, Healy said. But he pointed to a bill from Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin that would require presidents to submit to examinations by independent doctors.
Dallek has little confidence in the medical summaries Trump has released in the past.
“Even limited information can be better than no information at all, but often it can obscure as much as it reveals,” Dallek said.
Weijia Jiang and Caitlin Huey-Burns contributed to this report.
